March 31, 2008

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortionâ€“ positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image heâ€™s projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter groupâ€™s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obamaâ€™s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he â€œnever saw or approvedâ€ the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who â€œunintentionally mischaracterize(d) his position.â€

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago non-profit group that issued it. And it found that Obama â€“ the day after sitting for the interview â€“ filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obamaâ€™s own handwritten notes adding to one answer.

Busted. (Via Hot Air, which notes “Those positions wonâ€™t even fly with a large number of Democrats, let alone in a general election. The Hillary Clinton campaign has already begun making the argument to superdelegates that Obama holds extremist views so out of touch with the American electorate that he canâ€™t possibly win in November. The questionnaire will bolster that argument, especially on guns, where the Democrats had tried to soften their stance since Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee in 2000.”) This also underscores Obama’s disturbing tendency to scapegoat his own staff rather than take responsibility, something he’s demonstrated on more than one occasion.

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